about me/about this blog

Hey, y'all! My name is Christina Austin, and I'm a swing dancer, rock climber, scientist, and awkwardcat. You may have seen me out climbing or dancing with such ridiculous accouterments as prosthetic elf ears or purple hair. I have a tattoo on my arm that looks nothing like a baseball.

This blog is going to be my thoughts on dancing, if I'm brave enough to release them into the wild, and trip reports from traveling, and maybe some random stuff. All opinions are my personal opinions, and I will endeavor to praise things I find praiseworthy and keep my snarkery to a minimum.

Sometimes the writing may be a mess, and I hope you'll forgive me that.

One spot of disclaimer- I may occasionally post somethings that are critical of dancing-as-art, and performances or competitions, but let me go ahead and say that at no point do I mean to imply that I'm "better" than the dancers I'm critiquing or any such nonsense. kthnx.

As far as my dance journey goes- I first learned to swing out at Clemson University in late 2003, and danced 1-3 time a week, class and socially, through the next 3 years of college. If only I had stuck with it! But the truth was, I was more into rock climbing than dancing, and didn't really travel for dance at all. So when I hurt myself in a rock climbing accident at the end of college and left my home scene shortly thereafter, dancing fell by the wayside for a while when life happened.

I entered a PhD program in Molecular Genetics (which I'm still in), married a fabulous fellow who I go on climbing adventures with, and who fills my house with music on the piano and the guitar (but doesn't dance), and didn't dance for about 4 years, in the mean time.

In the spring of 2010, I finally made it back to a swing dance, and was hooked in a new way. I immediately started traveling and thirsting to improve my dancing, and the last couple of years have been a fun, wild ride! These days, I'm into my old friends, lindy and bal, as well as blues which is new to me this time around. I love them all.